NEW YORK (AP) — Luigi Mangione 's state and federal trials in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson were both postponed on Wednesday, with the state case delayed until September and the federal case pushed back to October.
Judge Gregory Carro rescheduled the state trial from June 8 to Sept. 8, acting hours after the judge in the federal case, Margaret Garnett, moved jury selection in that matter from Sept. 8 to Oct. 5. Opening statements
and testimony in the federal case will begin on Oct. 26, Garnett said. Carro did not elaborate on his decision.
At a hearing Wednesday morning, Garnett said her decision was based on Mangione’s state murder trial happening in June, though she acknowledged the schedule could change again if the state trial were to be delayed.
“Whether we like it or not, we’re at the mercy of the state case," Garnett said.
Garnett rejected a request by Mangione's lawyers to postpone the federal case until January or February 2027, but such a delay could be in the offing with the federal case now set to go to trial just 27 days after the state trial commences. The state trial is expected to take four to six weeks.
In seeking to delay the trials, Mangione’s lawyers argued back-to-back prosecutions on a tight timeline would violate his constitutional rights. The state trial delay compresses the calendar further.
Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty. He faces the possibility of life in prison if he’s convicted in either case, which are set to occur two blocks apart in lower Manhattan.
Along with the new date for the federal trial, Garnett compressed preparations for jury selection to give Mangione and his legal team more time to review questionnaires filled out by hundreds of potential jurors. The original schedule, which was set when the death penalty was still on the table, would've overlapped with a state trial held in June.
Federal prosecutors opposed a trial delay, arguing that witnesses are harder to locate and memories fade with the passage of time. At least one witness will be traveling from abroad, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dominic Gentile said.
“The public has a right to a speedy trial as well, especially in a case as significant as this," Gentile said, noting that Mangione’s lawyers have had more than a year to prepare and that both cases involve the same allegations and witnesses.
Carro previously raised the possibility of moving the state trial to September — but only if federal prosecutors appealed Garnett’s decision barring them from seeking the death penalty. They declined to do so.
Carro was undeterred by Garnett's scheduling maneuver. Pushing the state trial until after the federal trial could have raised double jeopardy concerns.
The state’s double jeopardy protections kick in if a jury has been sworn in in a prior prosecution, such as a federal case, or if that prosecution ends in a guilty plea. The cases involve different charges but the same alleged course of conduct.
At a hearing in February, Mangione spoke out against the prospect of two trials, telling Carro: “It’s the same trial twice. One plus one is two. Double jeopardy by any commonsense definition.”
Thompson, 50, was killed on Dec. 4, 2024, as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind.
Police say the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used by critics to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.
Mangione, an Ivy League graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (370 kilometers) west of Manhattan.
His lawyers have argued that authorities prejudiced him by turning his arrest into a “Marvel movie” spectacle with armed officers parading him up a pier after he was flown to New York and by publicly declaring their desire to seek the death penalty before he was indicted.
In January, Garnett dismissed a federal murder charge — murder through use of a firearm — that had enabled prosecutors to seek capital punishment, finding it legally flawed.
Garnett, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, also threw out a gun charge but left in place stalking charges that carry a maximum punishment of life in prison.
